If we were not born with tendencies toward improper behavior, we'd be perfect right from the womb! Part of the purpose of life is to learn self-mastery, and that includes changing our behavior, our character, our personality, our desires, our very self-definition. We must become new creatures, pushing away our natural selves in favor of becoming like Christ. No matter how impossible the road may seem, with God it can be done.
What I do is a choice, even if I was "born that way." I have many natural tendencies that have been a struggle for me to overcome--in some cases a lifelong struggle.
If we were not born with tendencies toward improper behavior, we'd be perfect right from the womb! Part of the purpose of life is to learn self-mastery, and that includes changing our behavior, our character, our personality, our desires, our very self-definition. We must become new creatures, pushing away our natural selves in favor of becoming like Christ. No matter how impossible the road may seem, with God it can be done.
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Can it be proven? Only if you accept spiritual proof. But contrary to popular opinion, spiritual evidence is the best kind.
Case studies can be biased, social theories can miss critical variables, psychology models can explain a relatively small portion of real-world variance, logical conclusions can be tainted by limited knowledge of facts, mathematical models can be unknowingly incorrectly mapped to real-world phenomena, neuroscience studies can misinterpret signals. If you rely exclusively on worldly methods of gaining knowledge, there is no way to be 100% sure of anything until you know everything there is to know. It is impossible to identify all the effects of what you haven't yet conceived, and you can never know just how much you haven't yet figured out. Thus, unless you are deceiving yourself you can never rule out your own ignorance as the chief explanation of your findings. The divine way of attaining knowledge follows a different pattern. God himself tells you what is true in your mind and heart. You then choose to follow his counsel, and the promised outcomes result. Faith acted upon brings the promised blessings, providing supportive evidence of truth little by little with each step. A big difference for this path of gaining knowledge as compared to relying on our own understanding is that God does know everything, so by following His counsel we can avoid the major pitfalls that our own ignorance or self-deception would lead us to. Baptism is held in various levels of regard. Some consider it irrelevant, while some consider it just a nice thing to do if you feel like it. Still others consider it a sacred covenant with God, critical for those who wish to live with Him in heaven.
Christ told his apostles to preach the gospel to all the world. and those that "believe and are baptized shall be saved, and those that believe not shall be damned." Elsewhere he said that unless a person is "born of water" he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Some feel this may refer to natural birth. To resolve this argument, God has reaffirmed in our times His commandment to be baptized. Baptism is not meant to be just a technicality, but a life-changing event. The highest levels of heaven are filled with those who have given their lives to Christ, and who seek every moment to live as He lives, to love as He loves, to be as He is. A baptism asserting one's allegiance to and desires to follow Christ is then not a technicality, but rather an essential beginning step on that path. |
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